Completion Agenda for Baby Boomers

4/27/2011

From Inside Higher Ed, April 27, 2011

A group of nine community colleges is turning to some decidedly nontraditional students to help advance President Obama’s goal for the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020: baby boomers looking to return or remain in the workplace.

Mary Sue Vickers, director of the American Association of Community Colleges’s Plus 50 Initiative, made the case for the institutions' efforts earlier this month at AACC’s annual meeting in New Orleans. With 78 million baby boomers entering their retirement years — and more of them living healthier, longer lives — there is great demand, she argued, for offerings designed to retrain the over-50 population for new careers.